Angela Natividad's Live & Uncensored!

28 February 2008

At heart, the driving force behind Mayer’s personal interests is not all that different from what motivates her most ambitious projects at Google: She likes to create things that make people—“the end user,” in her words—happy. In fact, one of her biggest projects may be the stylish overhaul of the one Google feature that’s come to represent the company’s keep-it-simple philosophy: its home page.

Here's a funny passage about Google in the early stages:

At around 11 a.m. [on her second day at Google], Mayer went into the company kitchen for a snack. Peering into the fridge, she sensed she wasn’t alone. She turned around and saw Page standing in a small nook. Startled, she asked what he was doing. “I’m hiding,” he said. “The site is down. It’s all gone horribly awry.”

She made it home that night at around 3 a.m., typical for the hours she would keep. As she climbed into bed, she thought, “It’s not exactly confidence building to see the CEO hiding in the kitchen, saying everything has gone horribly awry.” She gave the company a 2 percent chance of succeeding.

27 February 2008

During the 'bucks blackout, competitors leapfrogged each other to deliver discount specialty drinks. Some, like Dunkin' Donuts, went all $0.99. Others, like Biggby Coffee and Coffee Klatch, gave cups away.

I'm reminded of an ad icon who felt great brands were never built on the lean backs of discounts. It lends the sense that your only means of differentiation is your cost. Discerning users in your market -- and if they stick around long enough, they all become discerning -- might take advantage of your discount once or twice, but over time they'll start veering away from you.

Nobody professes loyalty to a five-and-dime.

I'm prattling on about this discount/differentiation thing because Ken Wheaton at Ad Age thinks the 'bucks blackout served two major purposes (neither of which had to do with turning baristas into sages):

Proving Schultz means business about a dramatic company overhaul

Generating serious press

And not just one-hit wonder press either. When all 7100 of the biggest coffee chain's stores close to "improve the quality of its baristas," guess what message reverberates across the pond?

Starbucks isn't about cost. It's about quality. It's about you.

I used to be a Starbucks barista, back before baristas talked crap about customers in front of you and stole merch after hours. Corporate was downright dramatic about instilling a sense of sanctity in what we do for people. I totally drank the Kool-Aid.

Sometimes I miss the days when I stank of Breakfast Blend but was able to sincerely call SBUX my "third place."

Schultz, if you bring your little green empire back to basics -- serving samples out of a French press, learning the names of regulars, and making even non-purchasing loiterers feel welcome -- I honestly think you guys can bring the fire back.

You've always had the magic formula. Surprise, surprise! It wasn't breakfast sandwiches or copies of The Kite Runner. Just stop with this too-big-for-the-little-things nonsense.

25 February 2008

Assuming Tilley killed himself, people don't just take their lives because their feelings get bruised a few times. It's something they mull over for months, sometimes years. And a whole constellation of personal problems factor in.

I didn't think Tilley's "get your shit together!" memo was all that bad, but pointing fingers at people who covered it can only hurt the industry at large. Are agency watchdogs supposed to suppress their thoughts about professional behaviour out of concern somebody's going to take things too personally? That's the worst kind of extortion, and it's not a burden anyone should be forced to carry.

You need tough skin to walk out into the world and make a mark; universal approval is a gift nobody gets. Not Carnegie, not Jesus, not Elvis, not Bob Garfield, not Tilley.

Your detractors -- of which there'll be many, the more visible you get -- can't take your will to live from you.

13 February 2008

When he was about 29 years old, Ogilvy visited Intercourse, an Amish town in Pennsylvania.

He fell in love with the people, the smell of fruit in the breeze and a community that followed its own course, no matter what the outside world insisted was the norm.

And it had outlasted many norms.

Following a few visits and the right real estate opportunity, Ogilvy and his wife moved in. He learned the quaint tongue, made friends and became a tobacco farmer. His retreat into the simpler life totaled almost 10 years.One day, after realizing he was physically unfit for farm life, he decided to leave the place he loved and start an ad agency. He had $6000, a few "gentlemen with brains" on hand, and a list of the top five companies he eventually wanted to service.

With time he nailed them all, in addition to numerous Departments of Tourism and the most robust American brands then and now. One of his biggest regrets was turning down the business -- and partial ownership -- of a small copy company called Xerox.

05 February 2008

Sandwiched between months of tortured waffling and tax time, last week I finally exchanged my CA drivers license for a NY one.

Gripe the first: My whole name was too long byone letter, so the Assigned Bureaucrat shortened it to A, S, Natividad. I was not amused. The Bureaucrat, growing ever more uneasy with my presence, said if I don't like it I can change my name.

04 February 2008

Yesterday, when saner people were making pigskin pigs-in-a-blanket for their Super Bowl fêtes, Google published a punchy blog post about how Microsoft is trying to monopolize the internet with its Yahoo bid. (Can you hear the subtle "Mommy, mommy, look what he's doing!"?)

And soon -- really, too soon -- after all that, ZDNet let loose about what it calls Google's "Let's annoy Microsoft" campaign. Word is Google reached out to Yahoo after Microsoft made the indecent proposal on Friday.

01 February 2008

As a business, particularly one that disseminates marketing news (a totally hype-oriented industry), I don't generally like doing the bandwagon thing ("Friend me on MySpace, guys! And I will love you to DEATH if you stick me on TOP 8").

Unless there's good reason. And -- work with me here -- I think there are good reasons to cultivate an industry news presence on Facebook.

The cultivated inclusion of products in the Facebook business model. It's possible to maintain a general sense of what people are into (including their feelings about your brand) by observing what brands they connect with -- and finding out why.

An insider's glance on stories and memes circling professional and university spheres. (It's always interesting to see where they intersect.)

As a college student I wasted a lot of time on Facebook. As a professional, I still waste a lot of time on Facebook. Cognizant of its creepy magnetism, I watched with sadistic glee when Facebook expanded its network to the common man. Marketers and ad executives poured in from the furthest reaches of the universe, eager to get a ground-floor clue on the coveted co-ed demo.

What actually happened? They friended every person they've ever met, uploaded a zillion photos of themselves sipping wine and walking their dogs, and update their status 20 times a day.

But this is good. We now have a one-stop professional diaspora of people actively sharing information, promoting their podcasts and bitin' chumps.

The part of me that likes to rationalize time-wasting has convinced me Facebook is useful, and will only become more useful as the userbase grows and people share more information. John Battelle once said Google contains the database of our intentions. In a way, Facebook does too.

We put MarketingVOX on Facebook because we think it will give marketing professionals one more positive incentive to log in and connect with each other. In addition to marketing news, industry stats and that thing called "marketing culture" (stories about how marketing affects real people), we'll update the site with useful charts and spiffy apps (some of which we're now developing, most of which we're still thinking up).

I look forward to seeing what headlines catch the viral bug.

If any of this is useful to you, check out the page and become a fan. Questions? Comments? Input? I'm listening (obsessively).